One of the most important decisions in establishing an online presence is choosing a domain name. The right domain name for your website is important, for both your target audience and search engines. Ignore the trends and fads of the day and choose a name that makes sense for your business or subject matter now and will still make sense 10 years from now. Here are 10 tips to help you make a good domain name purchase.
1&1 Internet — This is primarily a large web host that is also a domain name registrar. Like all registrars, there are different charges for different domain suffixes. For example, at the time I last checked, you pay $0.99 for a ".com" on your first year, then $14.99 per year thereafter. The fee includes private domain registration, which means that your particulars are hidden from public view (done by registering the domain in the name of a proxy company). You also get a free email account and unlimited email forwarding, DNS management, a free SSL certificate for your domain, etc. Both credit card and PayPal payments are accepted by this registrar.
Keep in mind, however, that free domain names are usually free only for one or two years, after which the registrar will bill you for the annual or biennial fee. In other words, the provider of the free domain name pays only for the first billing from the registrar. Also take note of whether or not the provider charges a fee for setting up a domain name. Most services offer to transfer an existing domain name to their servers at no cost, but sometimes you'll find a setup fee over and above the registrar's fee.

Domain names put a friendly face on hard-to-remember numeric internet addresses. Every computer on the internet has a unique internet protocol (IP) number. A domain name represents one IP number or more. For example, the IP number for the domain name whitehouse.gov is 104.109.178.94. The whole purpose is to give users an easy-to-remember handle so that when sending an e-mail to, let's say, the President of the United States, you can type president@whitehouse.gov instead of the more unwieldy president@104.109.178.94.

Is your domain name portable if you change service providers? I’m starting a non-profit and I want to hold the name, but eventually I will fire someone to do the website development and want them to be able to use the platform they think they can work most effectively in. If I were to register with GoDaddy for services and get a free domain name… do I lose it if I switch to another web-hosting provider?
Administrative contact. A registrant usually designates an administrative contact to manage the domain name. The administrative contact usually has the highest level of control over a domain. Management functions delegated to the administrative contacts may include management of all business information, such as name of record, postal address, and contact information of the official registrant of the domain and the obligation to conform to the requirements of the domain registry in order to retain the right to use a domain name. Furthermore, the administrative contact installs additional contact information for technical and billing functions.
The first step to starting your website is registering your domain name. Think of your domain name as a street address for your website. Without a domain name, you would have to tell customers to visit your website at a temporary url such as 123.123.123.123/~yourwebsite instead of yourwebsite.com. Get your own domain name to lend your site a professional look and establish your online brand!
It is also possible to setup a personalised or branded email address that simply forwards email to an existing inbox you may already have elsewhere such as Gmail, Yahoo or similar. This way, you can continue using your existing email address and receive your emails through your branded domain name. To send from your personalised address you will need an email mailbox account.
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When you buy a Premium Domain name, you are also buying strong branding potential, high recall, and the ability to attract more traffic to your site. Finding a relevant domain name to your business will provide you a storefront online, allowing your customers the most access to your products as possible. Your domain name is an investment that is easy to map back to success, and the perfect available domain name is just around the corner.

Domain investors build a portfolio of valuable domain names, and attempt to sell them at a profit. Both Sedo and Afternic offer domain marketplaces (also known as Domain Listing Services, or DLS) for investors to advertise their domains to potential buyers. Once the seller and buyer agree, the aftermarket platforms then facilitate the purchase and transfer of the domain(s). As an Enom customer, you’re entitled to list your domains for sale on Sedo, Afternic, or both at the same time. Get started

A domain name registration is simply reserving your website's name for a specified period of time. The two parties involved with a domain registration are generally the user who is registering the domain and the domain registrar. The domain registrant is the user who actually registers the domain name and the domain registrar is the company who helps that user with their domain registration.

GoDaddy — This extremely popular registrar (probably the biggest today) offers .com domain names for $9.99 (plus 20 cents) per year (or $6.99 plus 20 cents if you transfer from another registrar). They have a web interface to manage your domains, free web redirection (where people who visit your domain will get transferred to another web address of your choice), free starter web page, free parked page or free "for sale" page, and an optional private domain registration where your domain is registered in the name of a proxy company. Besides .com, they also sell .us, .biz, .info, .net, .org, .ws, .name, .tv, .co.uk, .me.uk and .org.uk, etc. Note that (as with all registrars) the exact price varies depending on which domain you are registering (for example some domain suffixes are more expensive than others). Both credit card and PayPal payments are accepted.
Now it’s time to see if your domain name choices are available. Once you’ve come up with a few strong domain candidates, it’s time to plug them into Namecheap’s domain name search bar. We will search available domain names for you and let you know if your first choice of second-level domain or TLD is available. We’ll also suggest some alternate TLDs you might try if your first domain choice isn’t available.